These flowers are not my pink flowers. I am not a pink&purple girl. A little girl living on the other side of the house brought home a doomed begonia, which I replaced with these flowers because pink is her favorite color. Am I pink-complicit?

I came home from work with plans for my garden. My niece knocked on a window and I let her in. She collected two containers of compost and went through the basement to the backyard, where she added new material to the composter, spun it and added composted material to the solarizing bed.

In the kitchen, Pete said, “It’s going to rain in a few minutes.” He’s not a prophet. He’s weather-obsessed and seldom puts down his phone. I looked at him and looked at the sky above the tiny backyard. I went out into the yard and observed my beautiful and sweaty niece stabbing soil in the solarizing bed with a pitchfork.

“Pumpkin?” I asked.

“Yes?” she said.

“It’s going to rain in a few minutes. Can you wrap this up?”

“Yep,” she said. I went inside. She did wrap things up and was gone for no more than a minute when the pre-storm wind roared about the house. Pete and I wondered if our hanging plants would survive the maelstrom. Poor Topaz, terrified of thunder and lightning, cowered under my legs for an hour before the storm abated

Tonight, the air is fresh and cool. Pollen has been everywhere and overwhelming for a week, but tonight, feels more manageable. When I left work this afternoon, the air was summer-warm for the first time this spring.

I am ready for summer.